Flyers Scoop: Fast start part of Ovie's strong finish to season (With Video)

PHILADELPHIA -- In a season that has sometimes been unkind, Alex Ovechkin got the greatest gift of all Thursday night --- a set-up from the other team's goalie.

Ovechkin, the Capitals' franchise player who only recently started to play like one again, started a game in Wells Fargo Center the way he so often has before --- with a scoring chance on his first shift.

Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov took possession of the puck after Ovechkin's wide shot, and in his haste to clear it, passed it right back to Ovechkin. He wouldn't miss on his second try, putting the Capitals on the board 26 seconds into the game.

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With help like that, Ovechkin's resurgence, which has helped the Capitals get back into the Eastern Conference playoff race, can continue.

He came into the game Thursday with five goals in the last four games and 12 goals in his last 20.

"My job is to score goals," said Ovechkin, who in this "down year" had 32 goals and 56 points in 69 games before Thursday. "If I'm not scoring goals then the team probably is going to play defensively more. If I score goals or anyone else scores goals, it doesn't matter who, it will open up our game a little more."

The past two days, Flyers coach Peter Laviolette repeatedly referred to the Caps as "a desperate team," and Ovechkin doesn't disagree. But he doesn't think that should change the way he and his teammates are approaching games.

"If you want it so badly, your emotions are just going to go down," Ovechkin said, "because you're thinking about playing the game most of the day. And when you get to the ice, you're just like, 'My legs are not working,' and 'My mind is not there.'"

Ovechkin's solution? Don't think about the game "until right before it."

Whatever he's been doing lately, it's working.

"He seems to have drawn a lot of attention this year, and a lot of it hasn't been positive," Caps teammate and former Flyer Mike Knuble said. "But he's been working hard and having success of late. He's a big influence on why we've been winning games lately.

"He wants to lead our team, and we need him to (do that). We need him to be our best player every night."

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Scott Hartnell said before the Caps game that the survivors from the purge since the Flyers' run to the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals know how important the last nine games of the regular season are.

And not just because they would determine playoff positioning.

"The team with the most momentum, the confidence --- and the swagger, I'd guess you'd say --- going into the playoffs, that is the team that usually goes on a little bit of a run," Hartnell said. "It happened to us (two) years back, going to the Finals in the fashion we did, doing everything but winning the Stanley Cup. Last year we were struggling. There were confidence issues in every aspect of our game and it showed.

"These last nine games we want to get on a little bit of a roll here and feel great. That would just do wonders for the confidence of everyone. We just want to win games. That's what we're here for. That's what everyone in Philadelphia wants us to do."

Hartnell likes the philosophy that Laviolette often implores of his players: Go! Go! Go!

"We want to finish as high as possible," Hartnell said. "I don't think first place is even out of reach at all."